I'm not saying that digital will match film, but, for those interested in experimenting with it, I've found that the profiles from VSCO for Lightroom are pretty cool. (I'm not affiliated with them or anything.) link
Dont shoot me for this. And its not exactly same, film is bit more cyanic and in same time bit more colorful, which is near impossible to mimic in post-processing.
That sunset photo is pretty amazing.. those colors cant be reproduced in digital.
Digital problem is that there is something called WB and unless you do some hard PP, you wont be able to have different WB on same photo.
I always thought that if I lusted after a Leica, I would consider the Zeiss Ikon instead. It's supposed to have a better viewfinder and better focus since the distance on the viewfinder is longer.
Mescalamba wrote:
Digital problem is that there is something called WB and unless you do some hard PP, you wont be able to have different WB on same photo.
Yes, I think we've become a bit of a victim to the ease of digital. Where for film either a properly balanced film was used for a given condition, or a colour filter added in front of the lens to do the balancing, now we just change the gain for the colour channels in post - it's almost bound to be less good than when you "get it right" on film...
So on digital we might benefit from using colour filters again, too - at least in the tonal accuracy department. For example how about a weak red filter to make up for the 5DII's underexposed reds?
I don't think adding a colored filter that will affect the image globally is such a good idea when digital has the advantage of letting you adjust a single color specifically in so many ways. You can bring it up easily in post.
There is a lot of romancing film here going on and while I can miss it at times I have THOUSANDS of first hand stories where film is not that awesome after all. (Worked nearly twenty years in the photo finishing business.) Digital has less soul but of you learn it you can do so much more than with a negative or a slide, even when scanning.
Having been in the photo finishing business I did have a slight advantage in image processing when the digital transition started. At first digital was horrible but today I would not want to go back as I find it to cumbersome and of course since I can't process and print my films myself anymore.
Digital is easy, but the traps are many. Digital processing of scanned negatives and slides introduce a few variables that could be potential pitfalls too, I very seldom see scanned images from film/slides that are properly or even nicely processed. Most often it is like the worst of both worlds.
jotdeh wrote:
Yes, I think we've become a bit of a victim to the ease of digital. Where for film either a properly balanced film was used for a given condition, or a colour filter added in front of the lens to do the balancing, now we just change the gain for the colour channels in post - it's almost bound to be less good than when you "get it right" on film...
So on digital we might benefit from using colour filters again, too - at least in the tonal accuracy department. For example how about a weak red filter to make up for the 5DII's underexposed reds?...Show more →
A lot of shooters use UniWB and a magenta filter, which evens out the color response on digital and improves dynamic range.
Also, I think autoWB is a big culprit for digital shooters who want more consistent tonality. I learned from Jono Slack on another forum that keeping my camera set to a single WB allows me to visualize things a little easier and more consistently. When I'm outside, I always have my camera set to "cloudy" outdoors and "tungsten" indoors, no matter what the conditions, and that gives me a good foundation. I can always adjust the raw from there, if need be. I do still occasionally use autoWB in mixed lighting, but I try to keep my camera set at "cloudy" outdoors and "tungsten" indoors most of the time.
jotdeh wrote:
For example how about a weak red filter to make up for the 5DII's underexposed reds?
The 5Dmk2 is said to have weak (not very dense) red filters already, which makes the color separation worse and the metameric failure (different shades of red being recorded as the same shade) worse. The weaker filters help improve high ISO performance, but are detrimental to color accuracy. From what I've heard, the Sony A900/850 have the most dense filters among DSLRs and this is reflected in color accuracy and high ISO performance.
Edit: I realized I misinterpreted your post. Adding a red filter on the lens would compensate for the lack of density of the CFA, I guess.
AhamB wrote:
The 5Dmk2 is said to have weak (not very dense) red filters already, which makes the color separation worse and the metameric failure (different shades of red being recorded as the same shade) worse. The weaker filters help improve high ISO performance, but are detrimental to color accuracy. From what I've heard, the Sony A900/850 have the most dense filters among DSLRs and this is reflected in color accuracy and high ISO performance.
Only A900 had better CFA, A850 is bit worse (somewhere around 5DMK2). That was part of "invisible cost-cutting" to make A850 cheaper.
Canon 1D/sMK3 have one of best CFAs too. Neither of those two will break record in high ISO too.
Frankly, high ISO is bit overrated. With film you were limited to "reasonable" ISO 800 (maybe 1600). And thats exactly what top digital cameras can do to and much cleaner.
I would prefer digital camera with spot-on colors and ISO just 50 - 1600 over one with ISO 51200 and colors all over the place. Another issue is that colors degrade quite fast from base ISO. Except D700, most cameras degrade so fast that for decent color accuracy only 100-400 is usable. By that Im not implying that D700 is exactly great color accurate camera, its just bit more consistent over different ISOs in most departments (colors/DR/SNR) than almost everything else.
AhamB wrote:
Edit: I realized I misinterpreted your post. Adding a red filter on the lens would compensate for the lack of density of the CFA, I guess.
DaveOls wrote:
I always thought that if I lusted after a Leica, I would consider the Zeiss Ikon instead. It's supposed to have a better viewfinder and better focus since the distance on the viewfinder is longer.
Well, I first bought a Leica M6 then 2 Zeiss Ikon, one black and one silver. I sold the M6
Henrik, while I totally agree with you, I have found out in the last 6 months that I enjoy the film experience more. My results with film are very crappy, nothing compared to what I usually get with digital. But every once in a while, I get that amazing shot that I could never get with digital. Now that I don't shoot for clients anymore, I couldn't care less if the files are as good as digital or not, I just shoot for my own pleasure, and I find that pleasure in film. While the GXR files can put any film to shame in terms of sharpness and detail, I am still at 250 frames in I think 2 months of ownership. In fact I haven't used it in the last month.
Mescalamba, excellent points regarding CFA and high iso. Fully agreed.
Do note that with digital (specifically with with RAW files) you can change not only the white balance, but also the spectral response. Using tools like Adobe Profile Editor (free) or the ColorChecker Passport software you can construct and edit a color profile for a digital camera. It is *much* more powerful that adjusting white balance. And yes, it's been used to emulate specific film looks on digital.
douglasf13 wrote:
Also, I think autoWB is a big culprit for digital shooters who want more consistent tonality. I learned from Jono Slack on another forum that keeping my camera set to a single WB allows me to visualize things a little easier and more consistently. When I'm outside, I always have my camera set to "cloudy" outdoors and "tungsten" indoors, no matter what the conditions, and that gives me a good foundation. I can always adjust the raw from there, if need be. I do still occasionally use autoWB in mixed lighting, but I try to keep my camera set at "cloudy" outdoors and "tungsten" indoors most of the time....Show more →
Hmm... interesting -- but why do you do this? Purely to make the image you see on the LCD on the back of the camera more "standardized"? I pretty much always adjust the WB by hand in post-production so I don't really care about the WB during shooting and have it set on Auto almost all the time. Sometimes it misses pretty badly, but I would expect AutoWB to be a better "foundation" than, say, "cloudy" -- all your sunlit images will start out too warm, for example... Is there something I'm missing?
KaaX wrote:
Do note that with digital (specifically with with RAW files) you can change not only the white balance, but also the spectral response. Using tools like Adobe Profile Editor (free) or the ColorChecker Passport software you can construct and edit a color profile for a digital camera. It is *much* more powerful that adjusting white balance. And yes, it's been used to emulate specific film looks on digital.
That's essentially adjusting the channel curves in your RAW editor - in both cases it happens /after/ the sensor has captured the light. If you want to really change the spectral response you have to resort to filters again that attenuate certain wavelengths as required.
@KaaX: Douglas shoots with a NEX-7 (no OVF), so the colors affect what he sees while making compositions.
I'm guessing he uses the Cloudy preset because he probably applies a warm film toning to most of his images in PP.
jotdeh wrote:
That's essentially adjusting the channel curves in your RAW editor - in both cases it happens /after/ the sensor has captured the light. If you want to really change the spectral response you have to resort to filters again that attenuate certain wavelengths as required.
Well, yes, that's true, on the hardware level your spectral response is determined by the CFA and that's that.
However camera profiles still allow you to emulate a different spectral response pretty well as long as you don't try to go into crazyland. And I think profiles come into play before demosaicing, so they're more powerful than changing channel curves in ACR or equivalent.
My point really was that WB is not the end of global color adjustments on digital -- there is much more flexibility for people who need to and can use it.
KaaX wrote:
Hmm... interesting -- but why do you do this? Purely to make the image you see on the LCD on the back of the camera more "standardized"? I pretty much always adjust the WB by hand in post-production so I don't really care about the WB during shooting and have it set on Auto almost all the time. Sometimes it misses pretty badly, but I would expect AutoWB to be a better "foundation" than, say, "cloudy" -- all your sunlit images will start out too warm, for example... Is there something I'm missing?
I just followed the instructions in this thread.
Take a fully saturated (overexposed image), say 30 sec, and then use this as the basis for a custom white balance. My 5DII tells me that this image "may not be suitable for custom WB" but actually what happens if you do is that the camera's built-in channel response correction is reversed, and your jpgs will show a much better representation of what the sensor really captured in each channel. You will see a strong green cast - basically the reds are severely underexposed compared to greens if you shot a gray card. The camera pushes the reds by something like 1.5 stops!! Now if you used a red filter (or magenta as noted, because blues are weaker than greens, too) then you can really balance the response of each channel.
And its not exactly same, film is bit more cyanic and in same time bit more colorful, which is near impossible to mimic in post-processing.
